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What we Settle For

(So, I thought to myself as I read this written who knows when, why not? And here it is)

a poem… by ~burning woman~

It’s there – for all to see it doesn’t work – but no one can see it;not until it collapses in your lap:when the hopes and dreamsshatter as glass when a rock is thrownand children run laughingwhile another screams inside a dark house.Isn’t it amazing what we settle for?What we convince ourselves of?There is the tried and true and failed –Oh yes, failed, utterly failed – but what can one do? It’s all there is, isn’t it?

We are born into society – a pattern set in cement –and even if we notice (too late)the cement is cracked and crumblingno one is pouring fresh stuff down here.

Let’s see, what are the options for the budding human’s dreams?There’s church – some kind of religionso you can get hooked to God – the Great Onewho’s more silent than the grave;family – parents and siblings and fightsfollowed by separation and divorceand relocation to another apartment.

There’s government – you register to payeveryday of your life and beyond;there’s school – education to make you fit inand teach you how to walk with eyes wide shut.There’s work – you have to make money —it’s what makes it all go round and down.There’s repetition: your own family now —the confining straights of marriage and kids and responsibilities no one ever taught —you fly by the seat of your pants and you remain afloat – maybe – or you lose and fall and lose again.

And at that point there’s jail — you had your good timesthey brought you too low and you couldn’t climb outso they scoop you off the sidewalk,in cuffs you watch your shiny stolen carburn inside the basement of a houseand an ambulance screams away.

Stop, you say, stop already — it’s not that bad, not for most — and sadly I have to agree, it is not: most accept the middle road, the common ground. They warm the pews, fill the voting booths, sit at desks half asleep to make it workand in the end they commute, commute, commute – like the beat of a train’s steel wheelson a cheaply laid track — to the job and back from the job,“I owe, I owe, it’s off to work I go!”and it all becomes the same, blurred, wasted emptiness mixed with forgotten dreams alluded towith sarcastic laughter once or twice at a party.

And hope, what happened to it?Well, it’s still there, somewhere —in the shoe closet with its broken flip shelf, in the empty baby’s crib or the rusting barbecue.Sometimes it’s in the cold hot tuband sometimes in the boat with no licenseor under the scum in the swimming pool.

Mostly it’s in the maxed-out loans and mortgagesmaybe just enough to tell the Sheriff: not today,just barely enough.Dreams and hopes becoming the memoriesrounded up to form the padding in the coffin.

For most people it works well enough not to rock the boat… they are committed to the illusion and will hold onto it for dear life, even if the floors are cracking and the walls are crumbling and it’s all starting to come undone..

On the Titanic we shall stay
Hear the band play
Conscience long away
Deferred hell to pay
Tomorrow’s another day

Off topic, earlier you had signed the petition for JusticeforNoura and liked my blog post. There is a big change of events as death sentence was overturned yesterday, so thank you too, link at https://wp.me/p2Mxgu-1Rt